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Expecting Goodness & Other Stories Hub City Writers Project When renowned fiction editor C. Michael Curtis moved from Boston to a small Southern college town to accept a distinguished chair in the English Department, he assumed he'd be far from a literary center. But Curtis, long-time fiction editor of The Atlantic and self-professed "habitual anthologist," found himself in a pocket of extraordinary writers in Spartanburg, South Carolina, home of the Hub City Writers Project. The venerable literary editor's exploration of his new city has led to the publication of Expecting Goodness, a collection of 20 Southern short stories by both established and up-and-coming authors who share the same hometown. The title story by Michel S. Stone transpires in an airport as a hesitant young husband begins his journey toward an adopted child. In Rosa Shand's heartbreaking "Sweetness," a 15-year-old Charleston girl discovers her mother's lesbian love affair ("I knew we were in hell," she says). Two teenage boys looking for a good time encounter a deadbeat, aging Jack Kerouac in Deno Trakas's "Pretty Pitiful God." There's levity in this collection, too; in Lou Dischler's offbeat "Lola's Prayer," a file clerk believes she has lost a pregnant chinchilla up the tailpipe of her Toyota. Among contributors are Thomas McConnell, author of the story collection A Picture Book of Hell (Texas Tech University Press); National Public Radio producer Thomas Pierce; Susan Tekulve, whose collection My Mother's War Stories received the Winnow Press Fiction Prize; and Elizabeth Cox, author of A Slow Moon (Random House, 2001). Expect goodness from all of them.
Stories by:
Excerpt from Expecting Goodness: Bob and Mimi did not speak on their ride to Dulles, or even after they parked and he covered her with an oversized umbrella when the misting rain began and they waited for the shuttle to the terminal. By the time the shuttle arrived, the mist had turned to rain, heavy and sideways and splashing about their dress shoes. Mimi took the only vacant seat near the front of the crowded shuttle, and Bob moved to the back, finding a seat beside a pale, brunette woman clutching a brown leather purse, a folded newspaper in her lap. The spring morning was already warm, and the shuttle smelled of musty, wet bodies, and popcorn. Bob had parked in a distant lot and the ride to the terminal would take several minutes. He pulled from his bag a book on woodworking. His grandfather had been a master woodworker, and recently Bob had tried his hand at the craft. His first project had been a candleholder made of walnut, polished smooth, the surface slick, almost silky, and stained dark. He’d given it to Mimi, and she’d called the gift sweet and cute. Next he carved a turkey feather of wood from a linden tree. The material was soft and the blade slipped into it as if it were wax. But lately he’d attempted more ambitious projects, and he’d consulted this book for guidance. Bob had hoped to finish reading the chapter on table legs today, but after scanning the same sentence three times, he closed the book, and replayed the morning’s unresolved argument.
Links Click here to read an interview with editor C. Michael Curtis. Read C. Michael Curtis's bio at The Atlantic online.
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